St. Michael's Catholic Church (Cedar Hill, Tennessee)
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St. Michael's Catholic Church is a historic
Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
church near
Cedar Hill, Tennessee Cedar Hill is a city in Robertson County, Tennessee, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 301. History Jo Byrns, who became Speaker of the House of Representatives, was born in Cedar Hill on July 28, 1869. The local elem ...
, United States. St. Michael's is the oldest Catholic church in continuous operation in
Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...
. Its building incorporates a
log cabin A log cabin is a small log house, especially a minimally finished or less architecturally sophisticated structure. Log cabins have an ancient history in Europe, and in America are often associated with first-generation home building by settl ...
structure built in 1842 that is the oldest Catholic church building in the state. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


History

The founding congregants of the church were four families who settled near Turnersville between 1838 and 1840. They bought an acre (0.40 ha) of land from the nearby Wessyngton plantation to build a church. The original log meetinghouse, which measured by , was completed in 1842 and dedicated on the Feast of the Apparition of
St. Michael Michael, also called Saint Michael the Archangel, Archangel Michael and Saint Michael the Taxiarch is an archangel and the warrior of God in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The earliest surviving mentions of his name are in third- and second- ...
, May 8, 1842. When the church was built, its location was a
stagecoach A stagecoach (also: stage coach, stage, road coach, ) is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by ...
stop on the route between
Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...
and Clarksville. From 1846 to 1855, the church operated a
boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...
, Saint Michael's Male and Female Academy, located near the church. In 1864–5, the priest who served the church was Father Abram Ryan, who has been called "the poet-priest of the Confederacy". In 1934–5, the log structure was sheathed with
clapboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'', in modern Am ...
siding obtained from the dismantlement of an
Episcopal Episcopal may refer to: *Of or relating to a bishop, an overseer in the Christian church *Episcopate, the see of a bishop – a diocese *Episcopal Church (disambiguation), any church with "Episcopal" in its name ** Episcopal Church (United States ...
church at Glen Raven and the building received a major addition, giving it a T-shaped plan. A
bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell to ...
was added to the front of the building in 1942, the church's centennial year. The bell that hangs in the tower came from the same church that provided the siding. St. Michael's was the only Roman Catholic parish in Robertson County until 1944, when Our Lady of Lourdes church was formed in Springfield. St. Michael's now operates as a mission church of Our Lady of Lourdes. The church building was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
on August 10, 1973.


References


External links


Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Michael official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Michaels Catholic Church (Cedar Hill, Tennessee) Buildings and structures in Robertson County, Tennessee Roman Catholic churches completed in 1842 Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee Roman Catholic churches in Tennessee Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville National Register of Historic Places in Robertson County, Tennessee 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States